Slavery Hardens Into The Economy

Conflicting interests in north and south became increasingly
apparent. Resenting the large profits amassed by northern
businessmen from marketing the cotton crop, southerners attributed the
backwardness of their own section to northern aggrandizement.
Northerners, on the other hand, declared that slavery -
the "peculiar institution" the south felt to be essential to its economy -
was wholly responsible for the region's relative backwardness.

As far back as 1830, sectional lines had been steadily
hardening on the slavery question. In the north, abolitionist feeling
grew more and more powerful, abetted by a free-soil movement
vigorously opposed to the extension of slavery into the regions
not yet organized as states. To southerners of 1850, slavery was
a condition for which they were no more responsible than for their
English speech or their representative institutions. In some
seaboard areas, slavery by 1850 was well over 200 years old, an
integral part of the basic economy of the region. In 15 southern
and border states, the black population was approximately half
as large as the white, while in the north it was an insignificant
fraction.

From the middle 1840s, the slavery issue overshadowed all
else in American politics. The south, from the Atlantic to the
Mississippi River and beyond, was a relatively compact political
unit agreeing on all fundamental policies affecting cotton culture
and slavery. The majority of southern planters came to regard
slavery as necessary and permanent. Cotton culture, using only
primitive implements, was singularly adapted to the employment
of slaves. It provided work nine months of the year and permitted
the use of women and children as well as men.